Orange Crush
by Lirillith
Summary: [Suikoden III] Jacques x Aila, post game. Aila finally drags an explanation out of Jacques for the way he got her into the Twelfth Unit.


A/N: This was written in response to a challenge/request on LJ, though I can't, apparently, name the community or the requester since strips underscores. This is getting ridiculous! Can't they even trust us with punctuation?

Orange Crush

He was watching her. She knew it, and she was ignoring him because, just once, she wanted to make him start a conversation. And she wanted to pretend she wasn't showing off, even though the only reason she'd kept up her little challenge to herself was that he'd turned up after the third arrow and settled down wordlessly behind her. So it was really nice that she kept hitting the oranges.

Oranges. Growing on trees. She couldn't get used to it. There were lots of things about the Caleria region she couldn't get used to - the sparseness of grass, the brassy midday heat that had them stopped in what shade they could find until things got more bearable - but oranges were something you bought as a treat, when there was trade with the ironheads or from the east. If you tried to plant the seeds, somebody's father was bound to point out that any tree they got would never bear fruit, if it even grew, which it never did. And here they were, tiny but still pretty tasty, growing on an untended tree in the middle of nowhere. She'd started out trying to knock them off the tree from the shade of the next one, and she'd managed it a couple of times, but mostly she kept skewering them instead, and now she was running low on arrows and on unskewered oranges. She'd have to gather the arrows, and maybe the oranges, later; hopefully they wouldn't be too hard to reach. "You could try, you know," she said without looking at him.

"Nope," he said.

"And why not?" She looked over her shoulder to where he sat on the scrubby grass by a stack of the bolts for his bowgun, whetting the tip of one against a stone in his hand.

"Why waste oranges?"

"Why not? They're no big deal here, they just grow wild in the middle of nowhere." He didn't say anything, and if he ever showed much expression she might have thought he was laughing at her, the way Queen had when she'd first spotted an orange tree. But he didn't seem to laugh at much of anything, so she guessed she was safe. "Go on, try it."

"I'd rather watch you."

She was not about to blush, but maybe if she was lucky he wouldn't be able to tell if she did. "Um, _why?_" she asked, trying for scornful and ending up sounding slightly strangled. No answer, so she turned around and shot another arrow, nailing her orange again. Thank the spirits for that, at least.

"Jacques?" she finally said, without turning around this time. "Why'd you pull that earlier?" And that time she'd meant it to sound a lot more irate than it did. She was still mad at him, she reminded herself.

"...what?"

"That cute little stunt about asking me to join and not even mentioning it to anyone else," she elaborated, irritation helpfully washing away nervous embarrassment. One more arrow, which neatly sheared an orange off the tree and sailed past it to thud into the dust. "You tell me I can join, then you say you'll have to ask the captain, and then you _don't_—"

"...you said you'd join whether or not I asked..."

"And I _did,_ but so what?" she demanded, turning at last, one hand on her hip.

"Well... you're in."

"Yeah, but _why didn't you ask?_"

Scraping sounds came from the whetstone. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again, and he never looked up, not even when she marched over to stand looming over him.

"Don't ignore me!"

"I'm not!" At least that got him to look up.

"Well? Why?"

"...what if he'd said no?"

"...what?"

He looked back down at the bolt's point. "He might've. Or Ace might."

She bent down to look in his face. "You mean you didn't ask, because that way I _would_ join? That doesn't make any sense!"

He was staring at the bolt, but at least he'd stopped whetting it. Without looking up, he said "...it worked."

She straightened and stared at him for a moment, then laid down her quiver and bow and sat down next to him. He finally set the bolt down, but just so he could pick up another; she grabbed his arm before he could start work on it. "That sound's getting really annoying. Are you saying you actually wanted me to join?"

He met her eyes for a second, enough to say "yes." He looked down, then, at her hand or his arm. She looked down at it too - the shiny burn scar near her knuckles, the ragged edge of her thumbnail - then looked up, and saw how close his face was. His eyes seemed to be on her mouth, and she leaned a bit closer into the space between them, close enough to feel his breath, and let her eyes close.

His lips were soft on hers, tentative. She slid a hand over the downy stubble at the back of his neck and kissed him again, teeth light against his lower lip, and then he was kissing her back. That was a relief, because she was new at this and wasn't sure about being the one in charge. He didn't seem too sure about that either, and after a moment he pulled back. He might even have been smiling a little. She was.

"They're going to tease us both non-stop," she said, grinning.

"...great..." he said, without much heart in the sarcasm, and leaned in to kiss her again. She shifted her position, arranging her legs over his lap and scooting in closer, but her neck started to hurt that way, and she pulled back again.

"This isn't working quite the way I thought... I mean, I don't want to just _climb_ on you, but—"

"I don't mind," he said. She giggled, and he turned bright red. "I meant... uh... I guess I did mean that, sort of." She kissed him, but she couldn't stop grinning, so it didn't work all that well. He was fumbling to set down his bowgun bolt. "I'm sorry," he said, suddenly a lot more serious than she'd expected, and she blinked at him.

"What for?"

"...I should have said something to the captain."

"Oh." Well, that had been her point all along. "Why didn't you? Was it just the thing about keeping them from saying no, or were you embarrassed about me?"

"No!" He tried to kiss her again, but she dodged.

"You can't avoid talking that easy," she told him, and leaned her head against his chest so he couldn't get to her lips. "Well?"

" ...not about you," he said, finally. "About... they tease a lot."

"You don't say." No answer. She reached up to touch his face - surprisingly rough, she'd never really thought of him having stubble before - in case she'd hurt his feelings. "That's just what people _do,_ Jacques. Especially these people."

"I'm _mostly_ used to it." A long pause. It felt like he was resting his chin on her head. "This is different."

"...that's really sweet," she said quietly. A moment later, her tone more its usual, she added, "But still... you'll get used to it."

"I will?"

"I'll get you whipped into shape." He didn't answer right away, but after a moment he mumbled something she could barely hear. "Hmm?"

"Your hair smells really nice," he said, not that much louder.

"What's it smell like?"

"Like... your hair."

She was smiling again and she couldn't make herself stop. "I used to hate girls who got all stupid when they met a boy. Now I know they couldn't help themselves."

His chin lifted. "You're not stupid."

"Oh, that's not what I meant..." she said, raising her head, and then he touched her cheek and her hands were on his shoulders and they were kissing again. He seemed to be getting over his shyness, at least on this one count, but then, she was too.

Some time later, Ace came looking for them, walking quietly enough that they didn't hear his approach, so the question of how to tell the others something had changed was dealt with for them.


End file.
